Rich Sharples’ Blog

• Wow - that was a long workday - left my hotel room at 6.45am back at 11.30pm. Another busy day tomorrow. #
• Looking at my schedule - will be chatting with @Cote from RedMonk tomorrow afternoon - hope he’ll go easy on me #
• Slow start this morning - have still managed to avoid going for a run along the embaradero. #
• just blogged : raising the bar - http://blog.softwhere.org/archives/140 #
• Back at hotel for an email break and some rest before the JBoss party #

There was a time when when the main selling point of (Free) Open Source was cost and consumers of the technology we’re willing to make compromises in other areas. I think that’s changed and Enterprise adoption is one of the causes. If your are responsible for maintaining your organization’s business crtitcal infrastructure - you’re not going to cut anyone any slack - not Free; not Open Source.

Some news from Gartner and Forrester today pushed the bar for OSS a little higher. First the report from Forrester ($$) - based on a pretty exhaustive survey of application server users - it’s the first report I’ve ever seen that is essentially based on Quality - not the usual speeds and feeds and feature comparison. It very clearly busts any remaining myths that OSS is a riskier proposition than conventional, proprietary software - in fact it the report’s findings are pretty clear - JBoss App Server 4.x is likely of superior quality, is able to handle demanding workloads and our ability to resolve issues is better than our competitors. Note - I also think this demonstrates the difference between the old and new models of Software - ie. where the value is about the services you provide beyond the bits; not the bits themselves.

That said - the bits have to be good as well - again nobody is giving OSS an easy passage in the enterprise and according to the latest Gartner MQ on Enterprise App Servers ($$) - our bits are damned good (or I guess technically - our vision and execution of that vision is damned good).

Hopefuly we’ll get reprint rights for the Forrester report - not only is it good for JBoss and Red Hat but I think it’s good for the whole OSS ecosystem.

Tags: application server, forrester, gartner, java, Java EE, Java One, JBoss, leader

• Up early again - not quite early enough to go for a run though, leasurely stroll to Moscone with b/fast on the way instead. #
• 5 meetings today + lunch and dinner with friends - a little spare time this PM so I might get to see what’s happening at J1. Maybe. #
• spent a fair amount of time yesterday chatting with some of my old Sun homie’s #

• Briefly back at hotel, off out again for dinner with JBossians - to aledged best Chinese in N. America. I’m so hungry It may be wasted on me #
• tried to stay in bed as long as possible but only really got 5hrs sleep. Shower, then off for a stroll to find some coffee. #

• up early, starting trip to j1 #
• Arrived in SF - might have time to go to Community1 #
• at RedMonk unconf. listening to James talk about Twitter; though I’m actually more focussed on a day’s worth of unread mail #

• MS won’t go hostile on Y! (at least not as an acquisition) #

• Just Blogged : JBoss at JavaOne : http://blog.softwhere.org/archives/133 #
• mowed half the lawn then ran out of gas (literally and metaphorically) - will resume later - if I can be arsed. #

For me, the main attraction of JavaOne is the opportunity to connect email addresses to faces - ie. it’s a great social and netorking opportunity - nearly everyone in Java-land (and beyond) will be there. This year, it looks like JBoss will have a pretty decent attendance. As well as the usual developer, enterprise Java, SOA tooling and run-times we’ll be showing off JON 2.0 (as mentioned previously) - if you spend any time managing large, complex JBoss clouds - you should swing by the JBoss pod (#734) and take a look.

On the developer tooling side - go listen to Burr Sutter and Max Katz (Exadel) talking about tools (TS-7479) - I hear it’s sold out but another session has been scheduled. Then swing by the JBoss pod (#734) to see a demo of JBDS and see what we’re giving out for free

For detais of other talks and BOFs from Gavin King, Emmanuel Bernard, Mark Little and registration details for the JBoss party - go here.

See you next week !

Tags: java, javaone, JBoss

• kids are off school today and plan on spending all day in the pool - i’m not in the least bit jealous of course. #
• Looking at JAVA after hours - I think I need to kiss my stock good-bye. Not that I’m bitter that I wasn’t able to unload it yesterday ;< #
• The good news is we won our game last night - only just, pretty exciting. My 3 game goal famine is over too - manged to nudge one in. #
• got to get a grip on my J1 schedule next week - so far parties are outnumbering PR / AR meetings - nice #
• Just blogged : crazy great software : http://blog.softwhere.org/archives/131 #
• OK - about to attack calendar for nxt wk. Pls no tweets for 30 mins. #
• over my Sun options loss; I;ve said goodbye. If I mention them again - point me to this tweet. #

As I’ve said before, success in the new ‘adoption led’ era of software is about maintaining a great experience - like this example. I don’t care whether Rob is a paying customer or not today - what I do care about is his future potential to influence - multiply that by 20 million. Let’s hope we can keep Rob and millions of others like him happy.

Tags: adoption, JBoss